Evening Post. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1943. CLOSING GAPS AGAINST THE AXIS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 70, 20 September 1943, Page 4

Evening Post. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1943. CLOSING GAPS AGAINST THE AXIS

President Roosevelt's comprehensive survey is a reminder that the war is one and indivisible. When the Allies open the Mediterranean they open a way not only to Italy but also to Germany, and not only to Italy and Germany but also to Japan. In the Mediterranean strategy—Churchill's specialty—there was always the germ of victory not only in the Middle Sea but in all the oceans. How many successes have already branched from the Mediterranean stem! First, Africa was cleared of the enemy. Secondly, a new French African army, and a considerable part of the French fleet, came to the Allies. Thirdly, Italy was invaded,' and the Allies already have either neutralised most of the Italian fleet, or else have gained its active aid; which of the two may possibly be made plain in Badoglio's pending statement. Just think of it—the French fleet, or most of it, either scuttled or co-operating with the Allies, the Italian fleet with few exceptions at | Allied ports, Hitler left with practically j no Mediterranean naval power of striking calibre, and the Mediterranean opened to the passage not only of warships but of ."complete armadas to be launched in amphibious operations against Japan's south-western flank in the Indian Ocean! All that Hitler gains from this wreck of Axis Mediterranean naval ambition is what he can salvage from the sea. Almost equally difficult is his attempt to salvage Italian military divisions of supposed Fascist complexion. His political salvage consists mainly of the exhumed Mussolini, a pathetic museum exhibit.

"The victory in the Mediterranean," says Roosevelt, "will close one serious gap in the lines of our globe-encircling sea power—the gap between northwest Australia and Ceylon." TMs gap was once so' serious that Britain had to send a costly and time-consuming expedition via the Cape to occupy Madagascar and that French island's strategic ports. But today the Allies, instead of being content with forestalling Japan in" one corner of the Indian Ocean, can take the offensive in any part of that ocean—thanks to Mediterranean strategy—with the'help of both, the Mediterranean and the Cape routes, and can close the CeylonAustralia gap instead of merely placing obstacles at long range, such as Madagascar. One has only to remember Madagascar to realise how far the Allies have advanced in the Indian Ocean and in India. Both the Axis enemies' are now conscious, as never before, of their encirclement. Air warfare has taught Hitler that his European fortress is roofless, and the "soft underbelly" of Europe has proved so soft that Hitler has ceased to think of Italy and North Africa as a road to India, and is only wondering whether he can hold a defensive line south of Rome, or whether he must be content with the Po line. Meanwhile, it seems that he cannot any longer guarantee the Balkan peninsula, and even cannot keep the Yugoslav irregulars out of Fiume< Everywhere

in Europe, Africa, and' Asia, and in the Indian and the Pacific Oceans, Is seen the shattering effect of the Mediterranean strategy.

The little cloud on the GermanItalian horizon that used to be Egypt is now the tornado raging against the Axis in Italy and about to fall on the Balkans. The roof that Goering said would never be needed is now the uppermost ihing that the bombed people of Germany require, but Hitler and Goering cannot give the upper part of Germany a roof, nor can they afford any similar protection to the lower part of Germany if their Italian defences suffer the same fate as Sicily, Sardinia, and the Italian toe and heel. The Allies' Salerno landing challenged German power as no landing has done since Dieppe, and this time—ominous fact! —Hitler has failed, and the Salerno army and its southern co-operators have combined to push the Germans northward. And the same pattern of war is growing up in south-east Asia and the East Indies. If Egypt was only a far-away threat to Hitler, so also was Madagascar a far-away threat to Japan, yet today Japan thinks not of Madagascar but of the closing circle, which extends from China across the Ceylon-Australia gap to New Guinea, to the Solomons, to the active Nimitz fleet in the northern Pacific, and onward and northward to the Aleutians. Japan today finds but one gap in her circle —Russian Siberia. As roofless as Germany, Japan sees the avenging circle contracting, as Hitler sees it. Searching its prophetic soul, Tokio radio proclaims that Nimitz is taking positions in the northern Pacific for a direct attack on Japan, while Mountbatten is preparing to invade east of India; for which reasons the radio concludes that the ,war in east Asia is now really beginning. For once, Tokio may have guessed aright. The gaps are closing. The real war begins.